RFI published this Sunday, on its website, a report on “the new life of Tunisian deputies”, after the suspension, by the President of the Republic Kais Saied, on July 25, of the activities of the Assembly of the Representatives of the People (ARP) and the lifting of their parliamentary immunity.
With an illustration photo of Leila Haddad, French radio uses the title of an American advertisement “Desperate deputies”, which urges people to consider working for the sheriff’s office of Mahoning County, the steel valley that is a metropolitan area in Ohio in the northeastern United States.
The author of the report, Amira Souilem, thinks that this “could be the name of a successful series as the new daily life of Tunisian parliamentarians contains both intrigues with twists and turns, buried traumas and prosaic daily considerations.
By impromptually freezing the Assembly’s activities last July, the Tunisian president has changed the lives of the 217 elected representatives who are each trying in their own way to reinvent themselves. Two of them have agreed to reveal parts of their new lives to us.”
Leïla Haddad, a deputy of the so-called People’s Party, 48, decided to put on her lawyer’s gown again the day after the presidential announcements. “I am a pragmatic woman, on the ground. What interests me is to defend the interests of the people. It does not matter whether it is done in parliament or in court as long as I am working in that direction. So I wanted to go back to my original job quickly.”
Unwavering support of President Kaïs Saïed – and no doubt well informed – Leïla Haddad had also understood that the freezing of Parliament was likely to take hold over time….
This is not the case of his colleague from the Ennahda movement Saida Lounissi, the former minister of employment reputed to be close to Rached Ghannouchi, and who like his comrades in Ennahda is very discreet. She, at her home – around a plate of macaroons – in a residential and popular suburb of Tunis. The interior is sober, a minimalism brightened by the carefree frolicking of his three-year-old daughter freshly awakened from her nap: “It is said that the people of Ennahda and its leaders in particular live in palaces, but this is not true.”
When asked if it was to prove it that she proposed a meeting at home for this interview, she laughs: “Not at all! Even if I think it is still my apartment! »
Rifi-JDD
